Kansas City Actors Theatre (KCAT) is a non-profit theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. [1] Started in 2004, Kansas City Actors Theatre was founded in order to “challenge and enlighten the Kansas City community by producing classic and modern-classic plays using Kansas City theatre artists.” The company presents a collection of plays that are integrated either over a season or in rotating repertory, in order to deepen the appreciation of each play. [2] The theatre is also known to be a place for young local actors to obtain experience in a professional setting. [3] The artist-led theatre company often collaborates with theatre students from the UMKC Theatre . [4] [5] This Mission was exemplified when they were the first theatre company to run Lanford Wilson’s Tally Trilogy in repertory. [6]
UMKC Theatre is a graduate and undergraduate academic department of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) that provides both educational and professional training in multiple areas of theatrical production, including acting, scenic design, lighting design, costume design, sound design, dramaturgy and historical research, playwriting, and stage management, and maintains a strong connection with the Kansas City Repertory Theatre (KCRT), the leading regional theatre in the Kansas City area.
Lanford Wilson was an American playwright. His work, as described by The New York Times, was "earthy, realist, greatly admired [and] widely performed." Wilson helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement with his earliest plays, which were first produced at the Caffe Cino beginning in 1964. He was one of the first playwrights to move from Off-Off-Broadway to Off-Broadway, then Broadway and beyond.
In 2015, KCAT was awarded the American Theatre Wing's National Theatre Company Grant. [7]
The American Theatre Wing is a New York City-based organization "dedicated to supporting excellence and education in theatre," according to its mission statement. Originally known as the Stage Women's War Relief during World War I, it later became a part of the World War II Allied Relief Fund under its current name. The ATW created and sponsors the Tony Awards in theatrical arts.
KCAT uses professional actors in various performance spaces around Kansas City, Missouri. [8] Notably, KCAT has produced productions at the National World War I Museum , [9] H&R Block City Stage, and in Union Station (Kansas City, Missouri). Many founders of KCAT are also professors at UMKC Theatre, including Tom Mardikes . [10]
Anastasios "Tom" Mardikes is an American sound designer and theatre educator. He currently serves as Professor and Head of Graduate Sound Design for UMKC Theatre, an academic department of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
For a short period, starting in 2006, Kansas City Actors Theatre changed its name to “Actors theatre”, but the name returned to the original name shortly after. [11]
The University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) is a public research university in Kansas City, Missouri. UMKC is one of four campuses that collectively constitute the University of Missouri System, and one of only two with a medical school. As of 2015, the university's enrollment exceeded 16,000 students. It is the largest college in the Kansas City metropolitan area.
Love, Janis is the musical stage show about the life and music of rock and roll singer Janis Joplin, conceived, adapted and directed by Randal Myler. It debuted Off-Broadway in 2001, with musical direction by former Big Brother And The Holding Company band member Sam Andrew.
Michael Bradshaw was an English actor.
Mitch Brian is an award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter who has sold, optioned or written on assignment more than 25 scripts to major studios, networks and independent production companies. An American screen writer who grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas, he attended film school at California State University, Northridge.
Kansas City Repertory Theatre is a professional resident theater company serving the Kansas City metropolitan area, and is the professional theater in residence at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC).
The University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law is a public law school located on the main campus of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri, near the Country Club Plaza.
Clybourne Park is a 2010 play by Bruce Norris written as a spin-off to Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). It portrays fictional events set during and after the Hansberry play, and is loosely based on historical events that took place in the city of Chicago. It premiered in February 2010 at Playwrights Horizons in New York. The play received its UK premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in London in a production directed by Dominic Cooke. The play received its Chicago premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in a production directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Amy Morton. As described by The Washington Post, the play "applies a modern twist to the issues of race and housing and aspirations for a better life." Clybourne Park was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play.
Patricia Anne McIlrath was an American educator and theatre director who was pivotal in the founding of the Missouri Repertory Theatre and in the development of Regional Theatre within the area surrounding Kansas City, Missouri.
Felicia Hardison Londré is Curators’ Professor of Theatre at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). She specializes in 19th and 20th-century American, French, and Russian theatre history, as well as in Shakespearean dramaturgy.
Henry Stram is an American actor and singer. He is the son of famous NFL coach Hank Stram.
Theodore "Ted" Swetz is an American actor, theatre director, and educator. He currently serves as the Head of Acting at UMKC Theatre, an academic department of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
John Ezell is a prominent American scenic designer and theatre educator. He currently serves as the Hall Family Foundation Professor of Design at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he leads the UMKC Theatre Scenic Design program.
Cynthia Levin is an American stage director and theatre producer. She is the producing artistic director of the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri.
The Unicorn Theatre is a not-for-profit theatre operating in Kansas City, MO. It has a history of premiering cutting-edge contemporary plays and musicals that have never before been produced in the area.
The Mirror Theater was founded by Sabra Jones in 1983, who was also the Founding Artistic Director. The first program of the theater was the Mirror Repertory Company (MRC). Founding members of the company included Eva La Gallienne, John Strasberg, and Geraldine Page. Sabra Jones reached out to Ellis Rabb, Artistic Director of the APA Phoenix Repertory Company, John Houseman of the Mercury Theater, and Eva La Gallienne of the Civic Repertory Theatre Company. The company was intended to be "an alternating repertory company in the classic sense" of actor-manager leadership, which Rabb, Houseman, and La Gallienne pioneered. Alternating repertory refers to when one company performs a variety of plays in the same season with the same actors, which was formerly a mainstay of theater tradition. This system has been attributed with helping actors grow in their craft through a wide variety of roles. MRC was funded in its inception primarily by philanthropist Laurance S. Rockefeller, with additional donations from philanthropists and actors such as Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, and others.
Sabra Jones is an American actress, director, writer, and producer known for her expansive collection of artistic work and for founding The Mirror Theater Ltd. She has produced over 172 theatrical productions in New York City, London, and around the country, including the 1982 Broadway production of Alice in Wonderland. Jones has acted on Broadway, at the Metropolitan Opera, in numerous regional productions, and in select television and film roles. She currently lives between Manhattan and Vermont, working as the Founding & Producing Artistic Director for The Mirror Theater Ltd and for The Mirror’s Vermont chapter, the Greensboro Arts Alliance and Residency.
Eric Brent Rosen is an American theater director and playwright.
Last Days of Summer is a musical with music by Jason Howland and lyrics and a book by Steve Kluger. Based on the 1998 epistolary novel of the same name written by Kluger, the musical made its world premiere try-out at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri in September 2018. The musical centers on Joey Margolis, a young boy living in 1940s Brooklyn and his relationship with Charlie Banks, the all-star third baseman for the New York Giants.